On 23 February 2015, the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center for Human Rights (CDHFBC) released an urgent action regarding the forcible displacement of a group of Tojolabal indigenous people from the Primero de Agosto community, Las Margaritas municipality, Chiapas.

The CDHFBC “has received trustworthy documentary evidence regarding the displacement of the 57 Tojolabal indigenous persons, including 12 minors and one neonate, 20 women, and 25 men from the Primero de Agosto community, with this being an action perpetrated by members of the Independent Historic Campesino Agricultural Worker Center (CIOAC-H), who have been protected in this region by the municipal government of Las Margaritas.”

The bulletin adds that “according to the received information, today at 8am, 50 members of the CIOAC-H, including Reynaldo López Pérez, the ejidal commissioner, Antonio Méndez Pérez, the auxiliary agent, as well as other authorities from Miguel Hidalgo ejido, Las Margaritas municipality, entered the Primero de Agosto community, carrying high-powered firearms and surrounding the homes of the residents, leading to the displacement of the residents who fled to the closest highway, where they now reside in grave conditions: women and children lacking shelter, food, and security guarantees amidst the possibility of attacks from the group affiliated to the Miguel Hidalgo ejido.”

For this reason, in its Urgent Action the CDHFBC urgently calls on the Mexican governments to take the necessary measures to guarantee the human rights of the displaced, that those responsible for the forcible displacement and other harms of the group from Primero de Agosto be investigated and sanctioned, and that comprehensive attention be provided in accordance with the appropriate laws regarding internal displacement.

In an Urgent Action published on 27 January 2015, Amnesty International calls on State authorities to protect the security of Silvia Pérez Yescas, a human-rights defender for the indigenous people of the community of Matías Romero, Oaxaca, given that she has received new threats, despite having security protocols in place.

The UA details that on 13 January, Silvia Pérez discovered that several members of her organization, Indigenous Women for Conservation, Investigation, and Management of Natural Resources (CIARENA), had been threatened. A group of people who said they represented a cacique from the zone told them that they should “[abandon] the stupidities because you can even be thrown in jail for being accomplices of Silvia, and anyway she will be fucked over for getting involved in this problem of land distribution.” Furthermore, they added that “there are people waiting for when she will show her face.”

In a press conference held on 23 September, federal legislators called on the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) to stop the looming incarceration of Oaxacan rights-defender Bettina Cruz Velázquez, who presently free faces accusations of kidnapping and crimes against consumption and national wealth.

It bears mentioning that on 22 February 2012, the defender was detained and incarcerated, accused of kidnapping and crimes against consumption and the national wealth, though she only participated in a protest a year previous opposing high electricity prices in Oaxaca. On 24 February 2012 she posted bail and was released, but the legal process against her continues.

The legislators in question affirm that they “consider that the moves and process against Bettina represent acts of criminalization of social protest, illustrating the risky situations faced by persons who work to defend human rights. Through this process, it has become clear that the justice system has deviated greatly against them, particularly those who work in defense of the land amidst the imposition of megaprojects.”

Beyond this, in a communique published on 25 September, Amnesty International (AI) warned that, if the judiciary power decided to imprison the rights-defender, it would “consider nominating her as a prisoner of conscience.” AI stressed that the obligation of the Mexican authorities “is to guarantee that the justice system does not work in favor of the persecution of those who defend human rights, as revenge against their legitimate actions.”

In an Urgent Action published on 14 March, Amnesty International (AI) denounced the death-threats and harassment suffered by the lawyers of the Strategic Defense for Human Rights, Leonel Rivero Rodríguez and Augusto César Sandino Rivero Espinoza. These lawyers are known for their interventions in cases such as that of now ex-prisoner Alberto Patishtán, those arrested from the Front of Peoples in Defense of the Land from San Salvador Atenco, and communal police from Michoacán.

On 17 January, Rivero Rodríguez received a threatening telephone call and then presented a denunciation before the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR), though the perpetrator of the action has not yet been identified. Indeed, the PGR has now informed her that it plans to place the affair in the archive.

On 4 March, “three unknown persons invaded a hotel in which Leonel Rivero Rodríguez was meeting with members of communities from Michoacán state to address delicate issues,” regarding a case that she was covering together with Sandino Rivero Espinosa. On 10 March, the office that Leonel Rivero Rodríguez has in her home in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas was harassed.

AI has called on the authorities to guarantee the security of the lawyers of Strategic Defense for Human Rights, to undertake an impartial investigationi into the telephone threats made on 17 January, and the harassment of 10 March, as well as to guarantee that “the lawyers who work on potentially delicate affairs be allowed to carry out their legitimate activities without fear of suffering repression.”

In observance of the International Day of Non-Violence toward Women on 25 November, different collectives and organizations carried out acts of denunciation in the capital of Oaxaca. A caravan-march carrying dozens of paper coffins representing the 240 femicides that have taken place during the administration of Gabino Cué took to the streets of the city to Santa María Ixcotel, where participants demanded the punishment of the murderers and clarification of the cases. The organization Consorcio for Parliamentary Dialogue and Gender Equity denounced the inefficacy of the Oaxacan justice system which via omission has allowed for an increase in disappearances and murders against women, stressing that 99% of the cases find themselves unresolved, with the perpetrators unpunished. In this sense, Consorcio accuses judges of partiality and demands that sentences incorporate gender perspectives. Beyond this, members of the National Network of Young Pro-Choice Catholics carried out a march through downtown Oaxaca City which ended at the Palace of Governance, where flowers and crosses were left behind to represent the murdered women, and protestors demanded that the government put an end to the impunity amidst the increase in femicides and sexual violence.

This same day, non-governmental organizations in Chiapas demanded that the state government declare a Gender Violence Alert. These groups denounced “the incessant violence against women in Chiapas and the different forms of violence against women and their extreme conclusion: femicide.” They recalled that, so far this year (January-October 2013), the number of deaths of women has reached 84, 71 of whom were killed violently. On 24 November, the Indigenous Center for Comprehensive Development and Training (CIDECI) received more than 200 persons who participated in a “Meeting against violence against women and femicide in Chiapas.” Participants engaged in dialogue regarding three fundamental problems: structural violence, femicide, and women’s health. The next day, there was a march of women through the streets of San Cristóbal de Las Casas which raised the slogans “No more violence against women” and “Patriarchy kills.” In parallel terms, a juridical commission submitted a petition for a Gender Violence Alert to the Secretary of State Governance, based in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Also in observance of the International Day against Violence against Women, Mayan peoples and theists from the northern region of the state released a press-release denouncing these types of forms of violence. The document, among other things, mentions that “domestic violence is ever-worsening in our communities, as worsened by the consumption and sale of alcohol. The trade in alcohol principally affects WOMEN and CHILDREN.”

Also on 25 November, in Guerrero, President Enrique Peña Nieto announced the construction of a Center of Justice to provide legal, psychological, and economic support for women who are victims of violence in the state. The center was inaugurated in Tlapa, in the Mountain region, and it represents the first phase of a communal project called Women’s City, which seeks to build offices to provide comprehensive attention to women who suffer violence or have been abandoned or trafficked.

Following a meeting with Oaxaca state governor Gabino Cué, representatives of Peace Brigades International (PBI Mexico) reported in a press-release on 19 February some of the challenges for the protection of human-rights defenders in the state, such as “the adequate functioning and strengthening of the institutions and implementation of the Mechanism for the Protection of Rights-Defenders at the state level, in cooperation with those who benefit from this.”

Ben Leather, representative of the PBI, recognized the opening of the Gabino Cué administration in terms of human rights, but he warned of the worrying statistics on assaults registered to date. The latest report by Urgent Action for Human-Rights Defenders indicated that Oaxaca is the second state in Mexico (after Chihuahua) in the number of attacks on rights-defenders in 2011, and it leads for the first third of the year 2012. Human-rights defenders continue to report death-threats, harassment, defamation, criminalization, physical attacks, and murder. Due to the situation of risk confronted by rights-defenders, PBI has maintained a permanent team in Oaxaca since 2008.

In an informational note published on 1 November, the Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Center for Human Rights (CDHFBC) announced that it had presented a motion in favor of Francisco Santiz López, a Zapatista support-base from Banavil (Tenejapa municipality) who has been imprisoned in San Cristóbal de las Casas since the end of December 2011. The CDHFBC posited that it had submitted this motion for the immediate liberation Santiz López “in light of the grave violations of due process committed against his person,” which include the “lack of adequate counsel and access to justice, given that he lacks both a translator and a social defender knowledgeable of his language and culture, so as to assist him in his declaration before the Federal Attorney General’s Office,” as well of course as the violation of the principle of presumed innocence.

In observance of the international campaign Global Echo in Support of the Zapatistas that will end on 17 November, the CDHFBC requested the sending of urgent actions to different authorities, requesting the release of Santiz López.